As world leaders in Bali strive for agreement on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a new study in the U.S. has given the climate-change struggle a domestic perspective.

The escalating number of divorces leads to greater use of energy, researchers say, and governments should take this into account when formulating environmental policies.

Divorce is bad for the environment as it leads to more households with fewer people and greater consumption of water and energy, says a study published in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers said housing units require space, construction materials and fuel to heat and cool, regardless of the number of inhabitants.

In the U.S. in 2005, divorced households consumed an extra 73 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water. Thirty-eight million extra rooms required heating and lighting that same year, costing $6.9 billion in additional utility costs, plus a further $3.6 billion for water, and other costs such as land use.

The study concluded that a married household uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household because people watch the same television, share air conditioning and heat, and use the same refrigerator.

Comments

I like how they just assume that the separated people will use the same amount of space as they did as a couple. This is bad research: it’s overconsumption (bigger than necessary houses, bigger than necessary cars, etc) that’s the problem. Divorce is only an intervening variable to an (assumed or actual but definitely not necessary) doubled of consumption.

I’d hate to see people being forced to stay in bad (sometimes violent) relationships because of the misguided idea that marriage (rather than co-habitation of any kind, including roomates, eldercare, etc.) is somehow “green”. The Fundies will love this.

The only science here math wise is that yes divorce rates are soaring and it hasn’t slowed in quite a while. These days I don’t think there is anything you can do to stop divorce especially if you love someone but they want out of a relationship.

I agree that this study could be misinterpreted to suggest that marriage is “greener”, but I hope that wouldn’t stop people from getting out of a bad situation (I did). I also agree that it’s the standard of living that we insist upon that’s the problem (the one with the most toys when he/she dies wins, etc). What the study is telling us is that more and more single-adult households result from the current divorce rate (can you say “DUH!”? – they needed to study this?).

If that’s the case, then it’s more important than ever to educate people about how to reduce their impact. Options such as high-density housing and co-operatives can be very effective alternatives in some circumstances. For the less communally inclined, we have the technology to build green, highly efficient houses already. Building codes should be updated to reflect that. I stand in amazement watching the monster houses popping up all over the countryside, thousands of square feet for a family of three or four – boggles the mind. From my point of view, it’s just more housecleaning! But if people want houses that big, they should at least be required to meet standards for energy efficiency etc.

Its true and logical that divorce creates stress in the minds of people and not only in the mind of individual but in the mind of the whole lot. Therefore, its better to go through marraige therapy as it is the best way to prevent from all these things.

Its true and logical that divorce creates stress in the minds of people and not only in the mind of individual but in the mind of the whole lot. Therefore, its better to go through marriage therapy as it is the best way to prevent from all these things.

Its true and logical that divorce creates stress in the minds of people and not only in the mind of individual but in the mind of the whole lot. Therefore, its better to go through marriage therapy as it is the best way to prevent from all these things.

Because people today are more interested in monetary gain than happiness they get married for interests and end up seeing a Marriage Family Counselor and divorcing after a few short years or even months

I too support this.Separate is the people more is the number of use of appliances like refrigerator,air conditioning, washing machine.Really married household uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household.So better lets not get divorced with motto “less divorce, less energy consumption”.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE

Even if all the forests we fed into power plants were to one day regrow, in theory sucking all that carbon back out of the Earth’s atmosphere, it would be far too late to be any kind of solution to the global climate crisis.